Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mcvax!cernvax!ethz!ethz-inf!wyle
From: wyle@inf.ethz.ch (Mitchell Wyle)
Newsgroups: comp.editors
Subject: Re: Editor Wars
Keywords: editors, vi
Message-ID: <156@inf.ethz.ch>
Date: 11 Apr 89 11:31:08 GMT
References: <175@hcr.UUCP> <587@alice.marlow.uucp> <4048@ttidca.TTI.COM> <960@myrias.UUCP> <24@hcr.UUCP> <4129@ttidca.TTI.COM> <194@xochitl.UUCP>
Reply-To: wyle@inf.ethz.ch
Organization: Departement fuer Informatik, ETH Zuerich
Lines: 56

In article <194@xochitl.UUCP> cheeks@mars.xochitl.UUCP writes:
>And sometimes you can even pick your friend's nose.
>But you can never, never, NEVER pick your friend's editor!
>may now resume the previously scheduled religious war.

Thank you; we shall.... ;-)

The big boss, his pals, and all other people weilding the mega-Francs
here hate vi(1).  "Vi is not an editor; it is a disease."  They use
emacs or a macintosh, when their secretaries don't type for them.

I however, use vi almost exclusively.  I have not yet ported stevie to
my CP/M machine, but when I do, it's goodbye wordstar!  There are times
when the "modi" of vi make me angry, and other times when I'm thankful
for them.

I have been gathering macros, experiences, and help from the usenet
postings defending vi, but have not yet incorporated some of the good
habits into my vi usage.  I don't move around by paragraphs {  } or by
sentances ( ) as quickly or as well as I would like; I hardly ever
mark, bound, copy, paste using buffers :-(.

However, I often write one-time macros instead of sed programs.  I have
accumulated some nice macros in my .exrc, and recommend to serious unix
people to use vi instead of emacs.

Here (again) are my 11 reasons for using vi:

Why I use vi:
 
1)  Availability:  vi(1) is available on every unix box I touch.  I don't
    have to INSTALL it FIRST!!
2)  Support:  vi(1) is supported by the VENDOR of the boxes I manage.
3)  Consistency: All vi(1) implementations I've touched are consistent in
    user-interface, command syntax, cursor movement, ...
4)  Speed:  vi(1) starts running faster.
5)  Safety: vi(1) journals, recovers automagically after a system crash.
6)  Size: vi(1) is small, comes with the OS, needs no extra disk space.
7)  Management:  vi(1) needs NO system management effort.
8)  Macros: vi(1) has a simple, powerful macro language not requiring
    the user to know and love LISP.
9)  Terminal support: vi(1) will run on any terminal, including paper
    teletypes.  It needs no windows, graphics, or special features.
    The configuration of Unipress emacs here can't work with an adm3a.
    vi has special environments for low baud rates; emacstool is a pig.
10) Bug-free operation: vi(1) does not leave zombie processes, open a
    window on the console when you're remotely logged in, leave a user
    in your login directory after you log out, leave garbage backup
    files around, dump core, etc. as some delicious flavors of emacs do.
11) Inertia:  I've used vi(1) for a few years, have built up a large
    family of macros for shell-script programming, troff text, and modula-2.
    With continued commitment from vendors for support, why change?
-- 
-Mitchell F. Wyle                         wyle@ethz.uucp
Institut fuer Informationssysteme         wyle@inf.ethz.ch
ETH Zentrum / 8092 Zurich, Switzerland    +41 1 256 5237